Products that include images are a popular keepsake or gift for many people. Such products typically include a picture taken by an individual that is inserted into a product intended to enhance the product, the presentation of the image, or to provide storage for the image. Examples of such products include picture albums, photo-collages, posters, picture calendars, picture mugs, picture ornaments, picture mouse pads, and picture post cards.
Images can also be combined with other images, for example templates including background images and one or more image openings into which an individual's image can be inserted, either mechanically or electronically with a computer, to form a combined image that displays the individual's image in a pleasing or preferred manner. These image products can be provided in hard-copy form, for example as a printed photo-book, or in electronic form presented by a computer, for example in an on-line album. Imaging products can also include multi-media products, especially when in electronic form, that, for example, can include motion image sequences or audio tracks.
Many digital photographers amass large numbers of images and store them on their computer or on a photo sharing or photo merchandising web site. The images can be sorted into collections or albums that associate related images, for example images associated with a particular event. Despite the organization of images into collections, it is very often the case that a digital photographer will have many more images in a collection than can be readily used for making image products, even image products that employ multiple images, such as photo-books or calendars. Thus, users typically have to select from among the many images in a particular collection the particular images that are desired for use in a particular image product. This selection process can be very tedious and stress-inducing.
Photo-collages provide a means for presenting a number of images in a limited space by emphasizing the most important portions of the images and providing an interesting, artistic, or amusing image presentation. A photo-collage as known in the prior art is illustrated in FIG. 2. In FIG. 2, a photo-collage 10 includes a plurality of images 11. The textured patterns within the illustrated areas represent separate images. At least one image 13 overlaps another image 11 so that the overlapped image 11 is cropped and only a portion of the overlapped image 11 is visible. Thus, some images (e.g. image 11) can have portions that are apparently hidden behind other images. Other images (e.g. image 13) can be apparently in front of the other images, but have cropped portions. Other images can be completely visible and not cropped.
Photo-collages have been traditionally made by physically cutting up printed photographs and adhering them to a surface or by physically overlapping one printed photograph over another. When reproduced, a photo-collage takes on the appearance of FIG. 2. The advent of “what-you-see-is-what-you-get” representative graphic user interfaces and electronic image processing software on computers has enabled the design and layout of electronic photo-collages. These photo-collages can be rendered as a single, large image and printed, emailed, or viewed electronically. Regardless of the method of making a photo-collage, photo-collage include image selected from a collection of images.
A number of prior-art methods for selecting images from a collection of images are known. For example, U.S. Patent Publication 20070177805 describes a method of searching through a collection of images, includes providing a list of individuals of interest and features associated with such individuals; detecting people in the image collection; determining the likelihoods for each listed individual of appearing in each collection image in response to the detected people and the features associated with the listed individuals; and selecting in response to the determined likelihoods a number of collection images such that each individual from the list appears in the selected number of collection images. This enables a user to locate images of particular people but does not necessarily assist in finding suitable images for a particular image product.
It is known to preferentially select favorite images for use in a photo-product or to use a favorite image as the largest or most noticeable image in a group display of images. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,307,636 describes making photo-products using preferred images. In one example, a 5-picture album page employs a favorite picture as the center, largest image.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,271,809 describes a method for using viewing time to determine affective information in an imaging system that is employed to estimate user preferences for an image. This enables a user to locate preferred images for image collections that are frequently reviewed.
Prior-art methods of selecting images from a collection can be tedious, difficult, and inaccurate. There is a need, therefore, for an improved method to determine user preferences for images in a collection.